Power play pays off: CL&P close to restoring service to all customers

Published 5:06 pm, Saturday, March 20, 2010

GREENWICH -- After scrambling to restore power Friday night into Saturday, utility crews appear to be on the verge of finishing the job across Greenwich.

An estimated 51 of Connecticut Light & Power's Greenwich customers were without power as of 2 p.m. Saturday, down from the 1,535 -- or about 5.5 percent -- customers who were still in the dark as of 8 p.m. Friday in the wake of last weekend's storm. The 51 figure is 0.18 percent of the town's 27,955 customers. Across the state, the utility estimates that 80 customers have no electricity. The second highest town outage total is Darien with 20.

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During a Saturday morning meeting, First Selectman Peter Tesei said he was pleased with the progress he'd seen over the past 12-16 hours.

"Things are looking up," Tesei said. "Greenwich is looking like it should."

Crews were on track to restoring power to the remaining customers by Saturday evening, barring unforeseen complications, Todd Blosser, director of division operations for CL&P's southern division, told town officials during the meeting at Town Hall.

Previously, the utility had said that 99 percent of its Greenwich customers would have power back by midnight Friday.

With more than 1,000 customers still without power Friday evening, CL&P officials brought in more crews to accelerate the pace of work, Blosser said.

On Saturday morning, when the lights were still off for about 125 Greenwich customers, Blosser said he was confident about being able to get the job done before what he called the company's drop-dead deadline of Sunday evening.

"We did kind of stumble on our mid-point (deadlines), but on our final target, we beat it by 24 hours," he said Saturday morning.

Nearly 130 crews were working in the town Saturday to restore power, according to Blosser.

Up to this point, the utility company has prioritized its efforts in areas where power could be restored to multiple customers at once, Blosser said. The majority of the 125 customers still without power Saturday morning were those who had experienced isolated outages due to disruption to individual properties.

"If we are going to use resources, we want to help the masses first," Blosser said.

The town will conduct a post-mortem report in 30 days to review how the power outage was handled.